My guess is that they're making that available at this time (of traditionally low activity because those of us in the US are supposed to be asleep and it's still early for the UK for a Saturday morning) so replying to topics was temporarily unavailable.

Also, you should have thought this through better. If everyone was getting redirected (as they were), they wouldn't have been able to read <b><i>your</b></i> topic, would they?